Compassion as a Way of Life - The Zen Monks and Nuns of the Plum Village Monastery | Salesforce

Eighty years ago, Thich Nhat Hanh entered the monastery at the age of 16. 48 years ago, there was a conflict in his country, the Vietnam War. And at that point in time, he sent a message to the monastics in his country that it was important to come out of the monasteries and to work in the villages and in the towns to help with compassion and care, take care of the people. 34 years ago, he and Sister Cheng Kong founded Plum Village. During this time, he was in exile from his country because the message he gave of peace was a controversial one. Martin Luther King had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Eleven years ago, he returned to Vietnam for the first time. Four years ago, I wrote a letter to Thich Nhat Hanh because I had heard that he would be coming to the San Francisco Bay area. And he's a dear teacher of mine. And I wrote, honored teacher, can you join us to meet with business leaders to consider the ways in which mindfulness and compassion could serve as an ethical foundation for business? And to my delight, he said, yes. So three years later, our friend Marc Benioff, myself, and other business leaders met with Thich Nhat Hanh for a delightful afternoon of meditation and conversation about compassion and mindfulness. And today, we have the distinct honor and Privilege to have 24 brothers and sisters from Plum Village join us this afternoon. And they're going to offer us something very, very special. So I want to say just a few last words about this. They're going to offer us a traditional chant on compassion, a chant that cultivates the spirit of compassion as a direct experience. So we've been talking about compassion all morning. Now we're going to have a direct experience of cultivating compassion through this beautiful song that they'll offer. And what I'd invite you to do is open yourself to this, open your senses, open your mind, and really allow yourself the experience to wash over you, because it in and of itself is transformative. So with that, the monks and nuns of the Plum Village monastery will now come and offer us the traditional chant on compassion. Namo avolikiti shivara. And as they come now, I would invite us to also invite them to this stage to make this offering in noble silence. The monks and nuns of Plum Village.

It's.

Dear friends, in this world of turbulence, anxiety, fear, violence, discrimination, and noise. But there is a good news. The good news is that there is a quiet, safe place where you can take refuge. This safe island that we all can take refuge is not in New York City, not in San Francisco. But in yourself. And we all can come back to that safe place to take refuge. Every time you need some peace, some quiet moment to take refuge in, you can find that peaceful island right here within yourself. I myself, every time I feel totally lost, full of fear, despair, at that very moment, I know that only peace in myself, love in myself, understanding myself can help me. So I have to come back to my in breath, totally with my in breath, totally with my out breath. I try to dissociate myself with that news who make me so desperate, that event who make me so desperate. And that for a while sometimes I cannot touch my peace yet. And I need to continue to touch that peace by a walk. I go out, I walk in in. And my mind dwell totally with my in breath. My mind dwells totally with my out breath. And if I can succeed to keep my mind with my in breath and out breath for 110 minutes, 20 minutes and peace, clarity of my mind come back and I know what to do and what not to do. And it's what I want to invite you to try. Because telling is easy, but putting into practice. We need you to train yourself like I have trained myself. Please close your eyes and pay totally attention to your in breath. Totally attentive to your out breath. Try not to think of anything. Forget totally dream force and other activities. Next totally with your in breath and out breath. Breathing in, I calm all the tension in my body. I calm all agitation from the top of my head. I calm every cell of my face, every cell of my whole body. Breathing out, I release tension on my whole body. That idea of fear comes. I let go. Please fly away my little fear. Let anger come back. Please fly away my anger. I need some peace, some clarity before I can look deeper into you and to know the way out. With beauty, with dignity, with compassion. In July 14th of this year, there is a big terrible terror happened in Nice. Independence Day of France. A big truck with explosives go across all the big crowd of people and cause hundreds of people wounded, dying. And it's not the first time terror like that happened in Paris, in the stadium of sport, in many restaurants. And it's too much. So right at the moment I received. Mark Benioff is our first friend who sent to me this news. Oh, I'm so sad about this. I am so sad about France. Please bring everyone to Dreamforce. We will all heal together. We will all share the practice together. I was very touched because Mark did not blame anyone. There is no light of blaming. He did not use any word of anger. Or retaliation. His only intention is to heal. And he wished that we come to together with him and with all of you. We tried to heal as much as we could. And this makes me remember in the time of the Buddha. The Buddha have spent a lot of years after being enlightened, going around India and to teach. And his teaching is not very easy. Sometimes it's very difficult, dangerous. And I remember the historical fact when he gave the teaching on love, the discourse on love, because the turbulence, the anger, the fear is maybe similar to our time. And then he asked all the monastic around him, I want the lay people around him to sit quietly and to concentrate on the energy of love, of compassion in each of them. May the energy of love, of compassion embrace me, feel my whole body and mind. May I have loving kindness, compassion, deep understanding and great love to protect me. And then he asks his student to send a good energy to those in front of them. May those who stay in front of them to be safe, peaceful, full of understanding and love. And then we send our energy to those on our left, those on our right. And we continue to send this love. And that is the reason why today the monastic will stand up and we'll offer to you that chant. That chant you will hear the word Avalokitesvara. That is the energy of compassion, of great understanding and great love existing in each of you. Even you are Christian, Muslim, non believer, Jewish, you are all have that energy of great compassion, deep understanding and deep love. And so when we evoke the first round, we send the good energy to those in front of us. May those of us in this hall will be safe, peaceful, understanding and feel of love. And we send how good energy to those who from far away can see you can see us via this sharing and together we may heal the world. But I would like to tell you that it's not a wishful thinking that I have done. I am 79 years young and during the time of the war in Vietnam, I spent almost 40 years in the war of Vietnam running under the bomb. How I try help and those of us who work for helping like that. Suddenly, one night, an unknown man with mask came and threw grenades and killed and in front of two cops and 16% wounded. And our work is only for healing, for helping people. We help those in that side, we help victim other side, but they kill us. And so going back to the island of myself, I try to look deeply. Well, I have the Buddha nature, but they also have the Buddha nature. But maybe because their look, their perception about us is wrong, is Misperceived. They only see one part of ourselves. And they thought that we are bad politicians. So we continue to cultivate love and understanding. And in the discourse of funeral of my two friends, I said that I cannot hate you. You who killed my friend. Because I hate your misunderstanding. But not you. I know that you will help us if one day you understand who we are. And then people around are so moved. Many Catholic priests, many Buddhist monks, many non believers love us. However, a few weeks later they kidnapped six and they liquidate. And a few weeks later they arrest five. They brought them to the river bank and they said that are you sure that you are from the school of youth for social service of Thich Nhat Han? We are sorry, we are forced to kill you. And they shot five of my friends. But one friend bleed a lot. He fell into the river. And thanks to him that we knew that sentence. Because four others have been totally killed. And in front you can speak about compassion, mindfulness. But in front of four cups of those who serve for peaceful understanding, it's very difficult. And then again, I have to go back to the island of myself. Calming, loving, understanding. And thanks to that, at the fourth day of Kan Me, I remember the sentence the survival person told us. We are sorry, but we are forced to kill you. So in my discourse I said thank you for saying that you are forced. It means our words of understanding and love touch your heart already. But in the situation of war, you cannot. But I am sure that with our loving kindness, our energy of apalokiteshvara I am sending to you, you may have find a way to save us. And from that day we continue the work. From 300, we become 500, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 social workers without any murder. And I know that today, if you listen to me in this hall, if you listen to me in any Internet, if each of you try your best to touch the energy of peace, of understanding and of love in you. And then you send your good energy to your yourself and to those around you. And continue to do that. Remember my experience. Don't lose your patience. Even those who condemn you, those who are very cruel to you, those who chase you away. But as soon as you are still alive, please continue to send your energy of love and of peace. I am sure that one day our world will be much better. And our planet will have more chance to survive.

It's. It's. It's it. Sam. Sa. Sam. Ram sa. Lo. Sa. Sa. Jam sam ram. Ra. Sam. Sa. Radio.

Dear respected teacher, dear brothers and sisters. Dear friends, I hope you feel relieved after listening to that chant our teacher taught us when we're up here chanting as monks and nuns. First of all, the first chant, we send the compassion to ourselves. Each one of us have suffering, and we need to send that to ourselves first with the first namo. And the second chant, we send it to everyone in the room who may be at the retreat. And the third chant, we send it out into the world, into the cosmos. And I actually was sending it out to all our presidential candidates. I think they also need it. Whether you're on the left or the right, we all have suffering. And it's very healing when you can actually embrace someone that you might be irritated about and, you know, very angry, and you have a lot of, like, ideas about them. And when you have that, actually it's not very compassionate to yourself. So it's a practice.

A lot of people are challenged by that.

It's like, why would you do that? But you do it for yourself. So this is what I was sending out there to other places and other soldiers and other people who have to do these things so that we can live safely, that we can live abundantly. We can eat our lunch and not worry about our next meal. This is what was in my heart, and I just want to just check out there.

Like, some of you might be wondering, why are we here?

Because we got that a lot.

While we're four days, we've been around walking like zombies and, you know, smiling. And the security people, they go, what are you guys doing here? And so we get questions like that. We had one walking behind us, like, slow and making fun of us like a zombie.

And they were joking, and I overheard.

Them, and they didn't know why we were here.

So I stopped and I talked to the group of security or, like, those usher, and I said, you guys want to know why we're here?

He's like, yeah, yeah.

And I said, we're here to help people slow down and to enjoy walking.

I said, oh, I need some of that. Can I have some of that? You know, the way she said it, she understood right away, just helping people slow down. I said, you know, we're training people to slow down. You look around. And she got it right away, but I think she thought it was, I need some of that. I need some of that. Like, it's something I can give her, like some kind of drug or something. I mean, you know, maybe we can develop a drug for slowing down, but that's not going to help.

So that's One these are.

So we've been here and we're getting a lot of interaction and some of you are wondering, you know, why we are at Salesforce and conference for software and developers. And I think Bono said geeks or something like that. And we are also wondering and we're here, we're exploring. You know, our teacher asked us to be open and we're trained to be open minded. So we're here to find out what you guys do and how you are affecting the world. And just to let you know, we're not Buddhists up here. Just in case you're wondering and you're thinking that we're Buddhists, I like to see it. When my teacher invited me to follow him on a tour like this, I was still a lay person. He asked me, he said, son, would you like to join the Buddha's enterprise? And I was shocked that he used the word enterprise. And Zen masters do that. They kind of, you know, he knew that I was raised in Los Angeles and trained as an architect. So he chose the word enterprise. And you know, my family is Buddhist and they, we go to church, I mean temple and we, you know, we do the prayer and then we go home. Sunday temple or Sunday church. And that's the first time I came across our teacher and he invited us to join. He invited me to. And that word stuck with me up to now. And now I understand what he meant. Now that we're here, you know, this is not a religion. What this person found, this person in India, this Indian person, he's like a businessman, business person and we represent a company. So we're the longest lasting company in the history of humankind, 2,500 years. So you have to see it like that. And so what is our product if you see ourselves? So I'm trying to change your perception a little bit because we're not about religion. We're about helping the world be more kind, more slow, more gentle, more free. So we're teaching people to put their gadgets down. Some of you are looking at it right now. I invite you to put that down and feel what it feels like to not constantly be somewhere else. So this is our product, a kind of compassion, kindness. This is, I think we starting to partner up with. Mark invited us to kind of like in partnership. So in a way our company could be called like Heart Force. And Mark's going to help us. Mark's going to help us. Using Salesforce to promote it. You know, some people spoke about healthy heart and so unkind heart and, and Compassionate heart. And I think this is what we represent here. Brown and bald is hard for us. And this is, we need more of this in the world. And I think, you know, when I first our teacher was invited to Ty's little house over at the corner somewhere. And he gathered all kinds of people, CEOs and stuff in his house. And it was the first time we met him as a community. There was only like a few of us there. And I remember Mark invited and introduced everyone, including. And he had all the monks and nuns stand up and he introduced everyone in the room and we thought that was it. And then Mark, actually, he called everyone in the back who were serving us. They were catering caterers and people who were serving us. And that made quite an impression a lot of the monks and nuns. You know, this is a Zen master, very important people, CEO. But something touched me that someone would take the time to actually, you know, to invite people who were serving us to come out, to just acknowledge that they're there. So I think that was the beginning of our relationship in terms of working with someone who seemed very authentic. And more and more as we learned, we didn't know what salesforce, what they do at all. We were quite ignorant about this world. But I knew that our teacher gave us some monks and nuns assignment to actually tour the areas for us to enter is the business world and the media. And our teachers shared that the business world is too busy, so they have no time to take care of the planet, to take care of their families, to take care of themselves. They're so busy, the business world, the sector. And that's why we have this, why we're in the state that we're in as a planet, as a world community. And the other is the media and the amount of stuff that's going out causing us to discriminate and hate and so on. The food that we're eating through the media, the news, the Internet is polluting our mind, our heart is shrinking because of that. And so these are the two tasks our teacher asked us to explore. So this is part of our exploration to be here. And I just want to share a little bit of our product. The first one is about suffering and we want to teach people how to suffer. Our teacher shared, if someone knows how to suffer, they will suffer less. You might be wondering, I don't want to suffer. That's exactly why you continue to suffer. So we teach people how to be with their suffering. If you know how to be with your suffering, your heart will melt. Some of you might have touched that as you were listening to the chant, you might have remembered someone, you might have remembered yourself. You maybe had a little tear form in your eye. That's exactly, exactly the essence of compassion. It's not, you know, it's not a product that you can sell or you can package. It's only when you can touch your suffering that it will arise. So out of suffering, compassion arises. So you cannot run away from suffering. So what we teach is people how to be with your suffering. When we breathe in, you know, I am feeling sad breathing out. It's okay to be sad. Breathing in. I feel lonely. Everyone on Facebook and they are having parties and I feel alone. Tonight, Saturday, and I can sit with it. I don't need to do and go anywhere. I put it down and just be with my loneliness. And it's from that ability to sit there and be with your suffering that you begin to see that it flows and it goes away. This is the key to what we're teaching people, is that don't run away from yourself. You have to learn. There are ways, there are techniques. And this is our whole life to train and to share. That is our product. Teaching people how to suffer so that they can suffer less. And through the mindfulness, through the mindful awareness of our breathing with our walking, with our eating, all these different techniques. Even computer, you're on the computer, you might be tense and that will affect how you write your email. So we invent mindfulness bell. When it chimes on the computer, you relax your arm and you breathe. Why am I so tense? So this is how to suffer in many ways, tension and so on, and even the bigger suffering in our family. The second product is happiness, Compassion, joy. And happiness, as you heard from Daniel, is also a habit. Happiness is not a state you arrive to in the future. A lot of you in the business and you think you get there and you will be happy. Your promotion, your so on, it is not something you arrive and you have and it's not packaged. Happiness is a habit. And we have tools to train so that you're more peaceful, free, more solid, more stable, less reactive. And a person who has these qualities, freshness, more spaciousness in the mind, in the heart. And then that person no longer runs, no longer is pressured to push and pull. And that person is really nice to be around. You sit next to people who are solid, who are fresh, who are free, who are open minded, those kind of people. If you can package that mark, I mean, that would be the thing that we would want. Of course. You cannot sell it, you cannot give it. And that's the trick. And I think we're learning that it's kind of like koan for us to be here and to kind of work in this environment because we are also as monastic and as a community, as a company also being tested with iPhones and computers. And so we're exploring ourselves these products and making it more applicable, more applied to your life and to our life. And I just want to end here just to share tonight when you go home, please we share with you two mantra that you can ask for homework. When you go home, you see your loved one, your partner, your child, your husband, your wife, whoever it is, you can say to them and take a few breaths before you enter the door and say, darling, I know you are there and that makes me happy. Put your cell phone down, turn it off before you say it and make sure they have their cell phone down. Take them to another room, take them into the bathroom if you need to take a breath and say, darling, I am here for you and I know you've been in my life. These are the two mantra. The most valued commodity we have now is our attention. We're so busy, we have no, we don't give ourselves attention. Look around this whole conference, the attention everybody's trying to grab our attention. This is the most will be the most valuable commodity. And this Facebook everybody's fighting for our attention. You know, you clicks likes and all that. Your freedom will be to protect and maintain your attention, your freedom. And you call this a free country or look around. So please come home tonight and you know, give your loved one your full attention and say this mantra and they might react in shock as are you. Okay honey. But something magic will happen. That's what is the beauty of mantra. So take a breath and say those mantra. I know you are there and it makes me happy. It might be the first and last time. Darling, I am here for you. So with that, please do that before it's too late. And thank you for keeping your heart open and for having us here. And for those, there's some young monks and nuns who we're gonna do a little flash mob at 4:30 somewhere. That's union Square and that's a little more democratic. Not everyone can afford to come here. So we're gonna go share ourselves. And it's Union Square 430. So that's a plug for us rebels out there. Join us if you want.

Thank you. You've all been recruited to be a part of Hartforce. So be well and be a bridge. Thank you.